Ottawa conference rejuvenates health care chaplains

“Hospital corridors are not the same kind of space as these hotel corridors, or as subway stations or shopping malls,” said Dr. Margaret Mohrmann in an impassioned keynote speech to the delegates.

“[These places] are not simply work places, not even market places. We have to look to you, the specialists in spirituality, to denominate them and even more spaces as sacred””operating rooms, nurses' stations, clinic exam rooms, radiology imaging suites””so that we all may remember that these places where we spend our days are places in which important spiritual transactions are occurring,” exhorted Dr. Mohrmann, a distinguished academic in various fields including biomedical ethics and religious studies at the University of Virginia,

Creating sacred space in health care is a task being taken on by many young people, explained Ibrahim Long during one of the conference breaks. Mr. Long is an American Muslim convert who recently moved to Canada and who is studying to become a full-fledged chaplain. Mr. Long, who graduated with a BA in Humanities and Religious Studies before moving on to receive a Graduate Cetificate in Islamic Chaplaincy from Hartford Seminary, is currently completing his MA in Islamic Studies and Christian-Muslim Relations. He currently works as a Resident in the Spiritual Care Department at St. Joseph's Healthcare in Hamilton, Ontario.

“People contact me all the time through my blog,” explained Mr. Long, whose well-maintained site (www.ibrahimlong.com) offers readers with a multitude of information about Islam and chaplaincy. “Women especially,” he added.

There are certainly strong role models. Mr. Long pointed to Dr. Ingrid Mattson, the founder of the Islamic Chaplaincy program at the Hartford Seminary, who has in fact argued that chaplaincy is a meaningful way for Muslim women to take on a leadership role within communities.

Indeed both women and men have an important role to play, chimed in Mohammed Zakaria Khan, president of the Muslim Coordinating Council of the National Capital Region (MCCNCR) and a certified volunteer chaplain also attending the conference.

Mr. Khan has been visiting patients at the Ottawa Hospital's civic campus on a per-request basis for the past two years, and has been a regular visitor to the Ottawa-Carleton Detention Centre which is currently hoping to a fill a position for a Muslim chaplain (the Ottawa Community Immigrant Services Organization is handling the contract).

However, Mr. Khan and Mr. Long acknowledged that the process of becoming either a voluntary chaplain for one's own community, or a general professional chaplain for all, are both time-consuming and costly processes (Mr. Long currently offers spiritual care to all faith groups). 

Which are not always going to result in a job, explained Martin Rovers, a professor and administrator at St. Paul's University in Ottawa which offers chaplaincy training. Professor Rovers highlighted shrinking health care budgets that often see spiritual care the first to get cut. Professor Rovers doesn't blame hospital administrators.

“If I was in the hospital, sick, I want to see a good doctor, that's important,” he said, pointing out that hospitals increasingly turn to volunteers like Mr. Khan, who will come in and read verses from the Quran to Muslim patients, for example. Other faith groups also come in to help out.

And yet, there is a growing demand for spiritual care, added a chaplain who works with home care patients. Donna Mann trained to become a certified chaplain in her forties after homeschooling her children. The cheerful and diminutive woman glowed when she described her work helping people make sense of confused emotions and feelings during times of health stress.

She explained her challenge helping other faith groups, including Muslims, who often refuse any spiritual support from someone of a different religious background.

“There's a battle against the stereotype that we are going to try to preach to people,” she said. “But that's not what we do. We're professional chaplaincy and that means that we are like any kind of professional counseling ”“ it's about the patient.”

Ms. Mann smiled when she recalled the one time she was able to work with a Muslim family whose father was nearing the end of his life. She worked very close with him and his family to create a ”˜legacy document' that would help him define how he wanted to be remembered, and what he had valued about his life. Ms. Mann said the process was extremely soothing for the whole family.

“That's what we mean by spiritual support, it's about increasing a sense of dignity and helping somebody work though the painful things.”

As for providing chaplains of all faiths with more information about the needs of the growing number of Muslim patients entering hospitals and other health care facilities?  The Canadian Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR.CAN) brought University of Ottawa Postdoctoral Fellow Dr. Sylvia Reitmanova, inter-faith advocate Khadija Haffajee, and Imam Ahmed Limame of the Gatineau mosque together to provide an in-depth and careful analysis of the topic at a session titled, “What does God have to do with it? Cultivating Spiritual and Religious needs of Muslim patients to empower change toward building culturally safe healthcare.”

The slideshow presentation is available on the CASC website at http://www.spiritualcare.ca/convention/2013/index.html.

Amira Elghawaby is the human rights coordinator at CAIR.CAN and a freelance journalist.